Famous Secretly Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Secretly poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous secretly poems. These examples illustrate what a famous secretly poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Alastor: or the Spirit of Solitude

...nd 
Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;
Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone,
As in a furnace burning secretly,
From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,
Who ministered with human charity
His human wants, beheld with wondering awe
Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,
Encountering on some dizzy precipice
That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of Wind,
With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet 
Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused
In its c...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe


Deer Dancer

...put a quarter in the jukebox to
relive despair.Richard's wife dove to kill her.We had to keep her
still, while Richard secretly bought the beauty a drink.

How do I say it?In this language there are no words for how the real world
collapses.I could say it in my own and the sacred mounds would come into 
focus, but I couldn't take it in this dingy envelope.So I look at the stars in 
this strange city, frozen to the back of the sky, the only promises that ever
make sense.

My ...Read more of this...
by Harjo, Joy

Geraint And Enid

...eath; 
So fared it with Geraint, who being pricked 
In combat with the follower of Limours, 
Bled underneath his armour secretly, 
And so rode on, nor told his gentle wife 
What ailed him, hardly knowing it himself, 
Till his eye darkened and his helmet wagged; 
And at a sudden swerving of the road, 
Though happily down on a bank of grass, 
The Prince, without a word, from his horse fell. 

And Enid heard the clashing of his fall, 
Suddenly came, and at his side all pale 
Dis...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Hymn to Demeter by Homer

...and they began to make ready a meal by the stern-cables of the ship. But my heart craved not pleasant food, and I fled secretly across the dark country and escaped my masters, that they should not take me unpurchased across the sea, there to win a price for me. And so I wandered and am come here: and I know not at all what land this is or what people are in it. But may all those who dwell on Olympus give you husbands and birth of children as parents desire, so you take pity ...Read more of this...
by Homer,

Hymns Of The Marshes

...out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney


In Plaster

...superior,
And I'd been keeping her in the dark, and she was resentful --
Wasting her days waiting on a half-corpse!
And secretly she began to hope I'd die.
Then she could cover my mouth and eyes, cover me entirely,
And wear my painted face the way a mummy-case
Wears the face of a pharaoh, though it's made of mud and water.

I wasn't in any position to get rid of her.
She'd supported me for so long I was quite limp --
I had forgotten how to walk or sit,
So I was careful not to...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

Last Instructions to a Painter

...recreate. 

The close Cabal marked how the Navy eats, 
And thought all lost that goes not to the cheats, 
So therefore secretly for peace decrees, 
Yet as for war the Parliament should squeeze, 
And fix to the rev?nue such a sum 
Should Goodrick silence and strike Paston dumb, 
Should pay land armies, should dissolve the vain 
Commons, and ever such a court maintain; 
Hyde's avarice, Bennet's luxury should suffice, 
And what can these defray but the Excise? 
Excise a monster...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew

My Mothers Body

...ed and you pulled on my rubbery
flesh, you kneaded me like a ball of dough. 
Rise, rise, and then you pounded me flat. 
Secretly the bones formed in the bread.

I became willful, private as a cat. 
You never knew what alleys I had wandered. 
You called me bad and I posed like a gutter 
queen in a dress sewn of knives. 

All I feared was being stuck in a box 
with a lid. A good woman appeared to me 
indistinguishable from a dead one 
except that she worked all the time. 

Your...Read more of this...
by Piercy, Marge

Myself and Mine

...eminent man—I rebuke to his face the one that was thought most worthy. 

(Who are you? you mean devil! And what are you secretly guilty of, all your life? 
Will you turn aside all your life? Will you grub and chatter all your life?)

(And who are you—blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages, reminiscences, 
Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak a single word?) 

Let others finish specimens—I never finish specimens; 
I shower them by exhaustless laws, as Nature d...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Part 7 of Trout Fishing in America

...ut Fishing in America, rather than its numerical

layout. I never knew what the exact number of their room

was. I knew secretly it was in the three hundreds and that

was all.

 Anyway, it was easier for me to establish order in my

mind by pretending that the cat was named after their room

number. It seemed like a good idea and the logical reason

for a cat to have the name 208. It, of course, was not true.

It was a fib. The cat's name was 208 and the room number

was in ...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Ruins of Rome by Bellay

...ds forever, 
Do not restrain your images still mourning) 
Tell me then (for perhaps some one of you 
Yet here above him secretly doth hide) 
Do ye not feel your torments to accrue, 
When ye sometimes behold the ruin'd pride 
Of these old Roman works built with your hands, 
Now to become nought else, but heaped sands? 


16 

Like as ye see the wrathful sea from far, 
In a great mountain heap'd with hideous noise, 
Eftsoons of thousand bilows shouldered narre, 
Against a rock ...Read more of this...
by Spenser, Edmund

Secret

...g I have made 
Of your hair and eyes . . . 
And you will never know 
That deep in my heart
I shelter a song of you
Secretly . . . . ...Read more of this...
by Bennett, Gwendolyn B.

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

...d the thing he started out to say
In the first place. Seduced by flowers,
Explicit pleasures, he blames himself (though
Secretly satisfied with the result), imagining
He had a say in the matter and exercised
An option of which he was hardly conscious,
Unaware that necessity circumvents such resolutions.
So as to create something new
For itself, that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this wa...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

Sestina

...d a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house....Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth

Shinto

...ng for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.

Eight million Shinto deities
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us--
touch us and move on....Read more of this...
by Borges, Jorge Luis

Song of the Open Road

...crossings!
From all that has been near you, I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would
 impart the
 same secretly to me; 
From the living and the dead I think you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the
 spirits
 thereof would be evident and amicable with me. 

4
The earth expanding right hand and left hand, 
The picture alive, every part in its best light, 
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
The cheerful voice o...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Everlasting Gospel

...
‘No earthly parents I confess: 
I am doing My Father’s business.’ 
When the rich learn?d Pharisee 
Came to consult Him secretly, 
Upon his heart with iron pen 
He wrote ‘Ye must be born again.’ 
He was too proud to take a bribe; 
He spoke with authority, not like a Scribe. 
He says with most consummate art 
‘Follow Me, I am meek and lowly of heart, 
As that is the only way to escape 
The miser’s net and the glutton’s trap.’ 
What can be done with such desperate fools 
Who fo...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The House Of Dust: Complete (Long)

...last in the enormous brain
And die away . . .
As evening falls,
A dream dissolves these insubstantial walls,—
A myriad secretly gliding lights lie bare . . .
The lovers rise, the harlot combs her hair,
The dead man's face grows blue in the dizzy lamplight,
The watchman climbs the stair . . .
The bank defaulter leers at a chaos of figures,
And runs among them, and is beaten down;
The sick man coughs and hears the chisels ringing;
The tired clown
Sees the enormous crowd, a mil...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

To Love is Not to Possess

...lly, despite a child’s scars
Or an adult’s deepest wounds,
They are openly free to be
Who they really are–and always secretly were,
In the very core of their being
Where true and lasting love can alone abide....Read more of this...
by Kavanaugh, James

White Flock

...two wood beams,
With such calmness promising
To fulfil your dreams.



x x x

Divine angel, who betrothed us
Secretly on winter morn,
From our sadness-free existence
Does not take his darkened eyes.

For this reason we love sky,
And fresh wind, and air so thin,
And the dark tree branches
Behind fence of iron.

For this reason we love the strict,
Many-watered, and dark city,
And we love the parting,
And brief meetings' hour.



x x x

Somewhere i...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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